Romney: ObamaCare rotting out Obama second term

posted at 12:41 pm on November 4, 2013 by Ed Morrissey

How bad has the ObamaCare debacle gotten for the White House, and the media that failed to report the obvious flaws until it was too late? NBC’s Meet the Press brought back Mitt Romney to grill Mitt Romney over it, trying to get the former Republican presidential nominee to support Barack Obama in a strange segment that needs to be seen to be believed. David Gregory plays the role of Obama in this weird recreation of a 2012 presidential debate, while Romney rips Obama for his dishonest sales job all along:

“The president failed to learn the lessons that came from the experience in Massachusetts,” Romney said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” saying a state-by-state approach is better than a “one-size-fits-all” plan.

“Perhaps the most important lesson the president, I think, failed to learn was, you have to tell the American people the truth. And when he told the American people that you could keep your health insurance if you wanted to keep that plan, period, he said that time and again, he wasn’t telling the truth. And I think that fundamental dishonesty has really put in peril the whole foundation of his second term.”

Appearing almost exactly a year after the 2012 election, the former Republican presidential nominee said regardless of how you evaluate Obamacare, the fact that it was based on a lie shows the president can no longer lead.

“The fact that the president sold it on a basis that was not true has undermined the foundation of his second term. I think it’s rotting it away,” Romney said. “We’ve got to have a president that can lead, and right now he’s not able to do so.”

If the president had been honest from the get-go, Romney suggested the Affordable Care Act wouldn’t have passed.

“Obamacare barely made it through Washington, as you know. And there is no question in my mind but had the president been truthful and told the American people that millions would lose their insurance and millions more would see their premiums skyrocket, had he told them that at the time it was going through Washington, there would have been such a huge cry against it, it would not have passed,” Romney said.

A week ago, Obama was at 44/49. He’s tailing off significantly in the week that followed. That may not worry Obama — after all, he’s not running for office again after 2017 — but it’s going to panic his fellow Democrats on Capitol Hill if it continues. And as long as the stories of skyrocketing premiums, bad websites, and reduced access to physicians continues to lead the news, that trend will most certainly progress.

The Obama White House has a credibility problem, one that could infect his entire agenda. It started when the White House refused to release data on the number of people who enrolled in the online marketplace, an important metric for determining the effectiveness of the $400 million-plus site. Administration officials say they don’t have the data, which is either a mark of extraordinary incompetence, or a lie.

The problem was compounded when millions of self-insured Americans received notices that their health-care policies were being cancelled. For years, Obama pledged that “if you like your health-care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health-care plan. Period.” According to The Wall Street Journal, Obama’s advisers knew the president was making a promise he couldn’t keep, and debated whether to have the president “explain the nuances of the succinct line in his stump speeches.” In other words, they debated whether to tell the full truth and decided against it. They knowingly told a falsehood, which is by definition a lie.

Rather than acknowledge the deception, the White House has launched a public relations effort to mitigate it. The most brazen example is the White House’s use of Twitter in an attempt to discredit an NBC story that accurately described the White House’s deception. “NBC ‘scoop’ cites normal turnover in the indiv insurance market,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest tweeted to his 9,500 followers on Twitter, according to a Reuters story on the operation.

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President Barack Obama cast Republican Ken Cuccinelli on Sunday as part of an extreme Tea Party faction that shut down the government, throwing the political weight of the White House behind Democrat Terry McAuliffe in the final days of a bitter race for governor.

“Nothing makes me more nervous than when my supporters start feeling too confident,” Obama said during the rally. “So I want to put the fear of God in all of you.”

Seeking an upset, Cuccinelli cast this week’s Virginia gubernatorial election as a referendum on Obama’s troubled national health care law.

National issues that have divided Democrats and Republicans spilled into the race and colored the final hours of campaigning ahead of Tuesday’s vote. As one of just two gubernatorial races in the nation, the results of Tuesday’s elections could hold clues about voter attitudes and both parties’ messages heading into the 2014 midterm elections.

Obama tore into Cuccinelli as an ideologue unwilling to compromise, while Cuccinelli was telling his supporters that Tuesday’s election will be a test for the health care law and McAuliffe’s support for it.

Romney brushed those aside, saying Christie had satisfied his campaign’s requirements. He also cast Christie’s credentials — and the fact that he is set up to win re-election by a landslide in blue-state New Jersey on Tuesday — as something that makes him stand out as a member of the 2016-hopeful field.

“At this stage, you look at Chris Christie and say, ‘That’s a very impressive guy,’ with a great track record, with a demonstrated ability to work across the aisle, with support of labor and blue-collar voters in New Jersey,” Romney said.

“It’s a pretty compelling story. And there are some other very compelling stories. Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio — I mean, there’s a long list of very capable people. But Chris Christie stands out as one of the very strongest lights in the Republican Party.”

For the first time, I’m not going to be completely a wet blanket on the Obama poll numbers.

I’ve been pointing out that his RCP average has been fairly consistently at around -6 (or maybe a tick below) from around the first week in August all through October.

It has finally started to slip again. Today it stands at -8.6. This is within spitting distance of his all time low of -10.2.

Also of note, it has now been 103 days since he has had a non-daily tracking poll with results above water. Longest streak in his presidency for that was 114 days, at just about this same time in 2011.

If he extends the streak past 114 (which now looks likely), or starts to settle at around -8.5 or lower, this would finally be significant.

Amusingly enough, for the last couple of months, the Rasmussen daily tracker has been pulling his average up. I thought Rasmussen was biased towards Repubulicans? Must have changed when they kicked Scott out.

How can we trust a guy whose very affiliation with a venture capital firm gives a woman cancer?

The problem facing the lazy stupid coward and his party is this. You never want to be the most senior person caught hiding bad news. Yet, for three years now we’ve been told that the whole awesome Obamacare thing is on track, under budget, and absolutely fabulous. That kind of hype was never going match up with reality but expectations should have at least landed in the same zip code as the truth.

While there doesn’t appear to be an organized strategy among the handful of moderates still in the GOP-led House, they say they’ll speak with a much louder — and cohesive — voice in the next round of budget wars. The moderates want to avoid a repeat of the shutdown, but it’s unclear whether they’ll have sufficient clout to counterbalance their more conservative colleagues, who spoke with one powerful voice when it came to the shutdown.

“I can assure you that the next time around, people are going to have their eyes wide open,” said Republican Rep. Charlie Dent, who represents a moderate district in eastern Pennsylvania. “I believe there will be a lot of folks speaking up. Aggressively, in fact.”

New York Rep. Peter King, Ted Cruz’s chief GOP antagonist on Capitol Hill, said congressional Republicans need to specifically target the freshman senator — who has not ruled out another government shutdown in his continuing crusade against the president’s health care law.

In an interview, the never-subtle King suggested several messages that Republicans could use to counterbalance Cruz: “Ted Cruz cost the economy $24 billion” and “Ted Cruz forced the Republican Party to its lowest levels ever and in that period, made Obamacare more popular.”

For the first time, I’m not going to be completely a wet blanket on the Obama poll numbers.

I’ve been pointing out that his RCP average has been fairly consistently at around -6 (or maybe a tick below) from around the first week in August all through October.

It has finally started to slip again. Today it stands at -8.6. This is within spitting distance of his all time low of -10.2.

Also of note, it has now been 103 days since he has had a non-daily tracking poll with results above water. Longest streak in his presidency for that was 114 days, at just about this same time in 2011.

If he extends the streak past 114 (which now looks likely), or starts to settle at around -8.5 or lower, this would finally be significant.

Amusingly enough, for the last couple of months, the Rasmussen daily tracker has been pulling his average up. I thought Rasmussen was biased towards Repubulicans? Must have changed when they kicked Scott out.

And I think that fundamental dishonesty has really put in peril the whole foundation of his second term.”

No, it’s not just that ‘fundamental dishonesty’ that imperils the President’s second term. It’s the pattern and collection of ‘fundamental dishonesty’ that has clearly damaged the President’s credibility.

The political dunce Romney proved his (lack of) mettle last time as he blew a sure thing versus the hobbled Obama. Here Romney suggests we nominate a liberal Republican just like himself. The problem is that the base would revolt in third party style, and with Christie the base would find its own Sarvis (VA) but on a national level. The critical thing is not trying to appeal to leftists & moderates, but the critical thing will be keeping the party unified, and limiting the “missing white vote” or 3rd party vote that Christie would deliver in spades.

You know, Ed, I think you are being a bit over-fair to the media when you say they did not report on obvious Obamacare flaws until it was too late. I would argue that they are reporting on this stuff right on schedule…AFTER the presidential election had their guy safely elected and hopefully far enough in advance of the 2014 mid-term elections so that people will forget it and the Dems will not suffer. I think that the media must be considered through a lens that treats them as the propaganda arm of the DNC.

I know! Libbie was all over the Trayvon Martin trial but when it comes to a Dem who refuses make physical contact with blacks, on television no less, and Libbie is as absent as Obama among the saved come judgement day.

National civil rights leaders reacted to Democratic candidate for Virginia Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam refusing on camera to shake hands with his Republican opponent—right after confirming that he wants to massively expand government healthcare and not denying allegations that he thinks traditional Christians have no right to act according to their traditional-marriage views.

Virginia’s top Democratic candidates Terry McAuliffe (running for governor) and Northam have portrayed themselves as pragmatic centrists who are happy to reach across the aisle. But this video shows Northam won’t even reach across his chair.

After a lively debate, at 6:30 in the video, Jackson—the Republican candidate for lieutenant governor—attempts to shake hands with Northam, who will not shake it and doesn’t even look Jackson in the eye.

At first, a viewer might give Northam the benefit of the doubt that somehow he doesn’t see the extended hand. But Jackson dispels that doubt by taking his outstretched hand to tap Northam on the arm and then re-extends his hand almost into Northam’s lap. Northam still refuses to take it.

This comes on the heels of the final debate topic: gay marriage. The candidates had just differed on expanding government-run healthcare through Medicaid, beginning at 4:09 in the video. Northam said he supports adding 400,000 Virginians to government-run and taxypayer-funded healthcare, while Jackson said it would bankrupt Virginia, so private-sector options must be developed instead.

At 5:29, Jackson—a former Marine and Harvard-educated lawyer who is also a Christian minister—said he welcomes in Virginia both those who believe in traditional marriage and those who support same-sex marriage but that Northam believes people who do not embrace gay marriage have no place in Virginia. (One of Northam’s relevant statements is linked here.) Jackson adds that he believes that there is increasing intolerance of devout Christians on this issue and that Northam’s statements suggest anti-Christian bias.

I saw some of that interview and I did appreciate when Gregory tried to show the similarities of RomneyCare to ObamaCare and Romney would have none of it. He made the obligatory defenses of what he left in Ma. but that’s when he looked Gregory in the eye and spoke of the fundamental dishonesty of Obama. He looked like he was pegging the lies to the media to me.

Really? REALLY?? That Federal Registry item that was in the Forbes article was from, what, July 2010? Is this public information or does it require a FOIA request to obtain? I mean, this was in the public record for 2 years and no one called it out. Oh, and it’s not only private policies, but employer-sponsored ones as well. Now, why do you think they delayed the employer mandate for a year? Come on man!!

Amusingly enough, for the last couple of months, the Rasmussen daily tracker has been pulling his average up. I thought Rasmussen was biased towards Repubulicans? Must have changed when they kicked Scott out.

Chris of Rights on November 4, 2013 at 12:50 PM

I have been wondering that too but thought it just may be that since Ras adjusts the numbers polled based on previous months’ volunatary identification as an R a D or an I, it just may be that the TEA insurection against the GOP has lead to a big decrease in self-indentified R’s and that could be shifting the polling demographics enough to drive the O approval numbers higher.

To be more clear, Rasmussen only polls likely voters. If TEA insurrectionists say they will not vote for an R or a D, they may get dropped as likely voters and thus the poll demographics would shift and their anti-BO views would not be reflected in approval or disapproval numbers.

What does it say about VA Dems that they refuse to have physical contact with blacks? What’s next on the Dem agenda? Separate water fountains and whites only neigborhoods?

In all seriousness, this story will hurt Northam tomorrow.

Happy Nomad on November 4, 2013 at 1:25 PM

The truth about Dems….

When I was little (early 1960s), we moved to VA (DELMARVA peninsula near Chincoteague) when my Dad was assigned to Wallops Island. One night his office all went out to eat together for a welcome for my parents – one black couple, the others white. My Mom had grown up in a small Massachusetts town and just did not understand the way things were down there at the time – racially speaking. The black lady in the group stopped my Mom from getting a drink from “the wrong water fountain” and told her she had to go to the other fountain across the lobby – the “white” fountain. My Mom just didn’t understand why she couldn’t drink from the particular fountain right in front of her, and once it was explained, her response was “Is the water any different? No? That’s just nuts. Are people down here crazy?”

You mean the GOPe’s dismissal and denigration of the ‘TEA’, don’t you?

LegendHasIt on November 4, 2013 at 2:01 PM

Actually, I wasn’t trying to take sides in that debate. I was just trying to understand a clear shift in Rasmussen’s polling to be much more favorable to BO than Gallop while in the past it was the other way around. Whatever the reason, you see an awful lot of people say they will not vote R because they are not conservative enough. If enough conservatives say they are not likely to vote, their views will not be reflected in a poll of likely voters.

Yeah, I sort of got that idea from your following post on that topic. I misinterpreted your previous intent

As to pollsters… Having been one myself in the old days, but ran away due to the following:…. The safest rule of thumb says: The poll generally reflects what those paying for it were hoping to hear, unless the pollsters are so incredibly biased that they are willing to lose future business in order to advance their own agenda.

Mitt you could have3 been POTUS if only you would have campaigned against obamacare and promised to repeal every page of this horrible law the day you got into office instead of trying to have it both ways with your repeal/replace crap. Mitt showed he was too stupid to be president he thought romneycare/obamacare were “good things”

Mitt you could have3 been POTUS if only you would have campaigned against obamacare and promised to repeal every page of this horrible law the day you got into office instead of trying to have it both ways with your repeal/replace crap. Mitt showed he was too stupid to be president he thought romneycare/obamacare were “good things”
idiot. go away Mitt.
unseen on November 4, 2013 at 4:17 PM

Mitt you could have3 been POTUS if only you would have campaigned against obamacare and promised to repeal every page of this horrible law the day you got into office instead of trying to have it both ways with your repeal/replace crap. Mitt showed he was too stupid to be president he thought romneycare/obamacare were “good things”
idiot. go away Mitt.
unseen on November 4, 2013 at 4:17 PM

.
My God… For the LAST freakin time….for you memoryless haters who had no other viable candidate….
Late June – 2012
John Roberts CHIEF J – SCOTUS
WRITES MAJORITY opinion of WHY ObieCare WAS LEGAL AND CONSTITUTIONAL-
The game for OBIECARE WAS OVER- months before election. There was no more fight over HC at that point. Stop carping about HC- Mitt lost because most people saw him as hating poor people, women, Blacks, Hispanics- and he was a rich guy who was gonna take away your food stamps.
Its that simple.